R.A.: Press

Morgan Craft

“’The Living Mythology’ is music -- expressive sound -- that's both mysterious and comforting, though it departs from conventions to explore what's possible. Impressively performed, the command of the pace is also gratifying; Iistening, I am intrigued..."

Howard Mandel (Dec 11, 2015)

"The pieces are certainly not intellectual exercises in arcane equations, they are communiqués from deep space, or inner space, and somehow manage to evoke a definite emotional landscape. There are moments of real abstraction, where untethered, un-definable bass pressures slip through harmonic dust clouds. Oblique rhythms mass, dissipate, and interact with space stuff without ever losing their sense of story. The variety of textures and sheer inner complexity of the tracks all but demolish the notion that you are listening to a solo music. If I didn’t know better I’d swear it was a hip new band, maybe out of Brooklyn or London, surely not a lone guitarist improvising on a mountain. What’s also easy to forget, when you find yourself immersed in his ocean of sound, with no discernible signs that you are in fact listening to a guitar, is that at bottom Craft is an incredibly seasoned player, a real musician’s musician."

"...In this indeed highly original performance, he recorded loops of sounds, both harmonic and noisy, live played on his quitar and stacked new layers on top of it, including using a early 00s discman which transmitted hip hop beats to the pickup via headphones. He kept alternately adding and replacing elements so that the sound body organically evolved into an organic being able to propel itself. At several moments, Craft laid down his guitar and walked off the stage like a Leibnizian deity, resting after masterfully winding up the clockwork of the universe, now running itself in perfect harmony."

"Ike Turner and Bootsy Collins both answered Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, as did BS guitarist emeritus Morgan Craft. Three of the funkiest brothers in the world need to hear they can go their own way, go figure."

"Guitar virtuoso Morgan Craft’s solo performance sucks the room into a vacuum of prickly tension. With flammable shards of guitar feedback, Craft asserts an primordial dominance with deceptive sleight of hand. It’s almost as if the stage is cut off by a one-way mirror, with the audience bearing witness to a highly cathartic self-exorcism."

Mutamassik

about Symbols Follow:

"...After having gained a reputation as a skilled turntablist, Italo-egyptian composer Giulia Loli aka Mutamassik blows out in the tube of thought-provoking and heart-rending listening...Mutamassik's creativity intertwines with evocative spiritual visions that result in sonic streams where a selection of a few sounds comes alive by means of masterfully crafted textures."

Before the sounds of the Middle East became de rigueur sampling materials for hip-hop, Mutamassik was exploring ways of fusing various sounds and styles into a compelling, challenging whole, shards a-flying all the while.”

"Mutamassik’s 13-track That Which Death Cannot Destroy was one of 2010’smost under-recognized releases in underground music. It could also turnout to be a brilliant soundtrack to the current anti-authoritarianstreet-fight spreading throughout Egypt, the Maghreb and the Middle East."

"...a sobering shock...pounding polyrhythmic beats as hard as anything you’ll find, bass tones shaking you at a molecular level, a cornucopia of traditional and classical stringed instruments lost in the trance...Loli applies the culture shock directly to you via jumper cables. Crushing, stunning work...Mutamassik is operating at a whole new level here, and it would behoove you to get on it." (Doug Mosurock)

"...From the first 808 bass drum hit of the opening track, Mutamassik — Arabic for tenacity — establishes herself as a pioneering force in the global electro scene, deftly maneuvering the space between tradition and innovation, acoustic and digital, familiar and unexpected..."

about "High Alert 12"(featuring 4th Pyramid from Definitive Jux Presents, Vol. 3) "...This frightening soundscape is... combined with distinctly Mutamassikian bass-drum thumps. You get the feeling this is an aural tour of how the other side lives, those with war dominating their tank-laden streets. Harkening back to turntable innovator Christian Marclay, though conceptually "heavier" than he tends to be, Mutamassik drops subtle reminders of the mere existence of Third World struggle in these songs -- an unfamiliar, uncomfortable and frightening reality that most music-buying Americans would rather ignore."

Rough Americana

"Rough Americana could be said to initiate a new, trans-Atlantic musical discourse of cotton...This insight is made possible by Mutamassik's and Craft's research, which shows that black (reconstruction) music is a music of ruins."

From the jungles of Brooklyn to a cave in the mountains of Italy via Cairo; Mutamassik keeps relocating headquarters for immigrant punkjaw revolution. She collides South Egyptian sa’aidi hardcore with jungle with baladi breakbeats with hip hop from the Bronx. The sounds have gotten deeper and darker with the years, but the rhythms remain as aggressive as ever. As a DJ and producer, Mutamassik always attacks full on —rough and rugged. But then again, Mutamassik means stronghold in Arabic, with a touch of fanaticism. She defies the tendency to clean up and gloss over "savage" music for the museums. Rough Americana, her project with avant-guitarist Morgan Craft, is a reaction to US politics post 9/11. They simply relocated their studio from Brooklyn to the Italian mountains, living their politics and dealing with issues of colonialism, migration and cynicism. Here, Mutamassik and Craft are exploring experiences growing up in the depressive Mid-Western Rustbelt of America, with North African, Italian and Native American mixed backgrounds. The darkness of apocalyptic post-industrial wasteland seeping out and sinking in. Teenage punk rocker experiments in heavy metal bands. Living their politics, the Mutamassik and Craft mission is to "wake people the fuck up" and make them feel something. Protests and marches are not enough. As Mutamassik says, "for those with simple means, may your resourcefulness shine. Lest we ever forget, where one is the oppressed, in another land he is the oppressor."

About 'ROUGH AMERICANA'- "This duo are members of that great local sensation Burnt Sugar featuring Ms. (DJ) Mutamassik on turntables, tapes and effects and Mr. Morgan Craft on guitar with devices. This cd was recorded live and is completely improvised. There are 17 short tracks and it is just over a half hour, yet it all flows together creating a series of somewhat disturbing moods or images. Samples are taken from ethnic recordings, the news and other unspecified sources. Ominous fluctuations, helicopters landing, mutant electronics, bent beats, telephone tones, disembodied voices, violent samples dumped in the blender and mixed together in strange ways. The cover art is a blown up copy of a dollar bill with some appropriate political images added. Relatively bizarre and fascinating throughout."